Friday, October 26, 2007

No, caffeine is a pick-ME-up; 'pick up' is the verb.

It's sad that this really isn't remarkable anymore.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do you mean "No caffeine is a ..." or "No, caffeine is a ..."?

Would you explain how to properly use a hyphen when connecting adjectives? It has bothered me for some time, and I haven't been able to find a good explanation on its usage.

10/30/2007 07:38:00 AM  
Blogger nori said...

Yeah, I did mean "No, caffeine ..." but apparently blogger thought it knew better, and stripped the comma for me. Thanks, blogger. (I'll go add it back.) (I even looked in my text-message outbox, and it's there, with the comma!)

Hyphens are used when connecting *adjectives*, yes. But "pick-up" in the above context is a verb -- what the Germans call a "separable verb," one to which a preposition is inherent. "To pick" is different than "to pick up". So, you can pick something up, but when you do, it's considered a pick-up (or pickup, as in truck). However, if you use the hyphen, it's immediately in the nominative form, not the verb form. You can't "pick-up" a drink (because that's a noun), but you can "pick up a drink."

Make sense?

10/30/2007 10:44:00 AM  
Blogger Claire: said...

to be annoying, it could be an adjective describing the coffee. as in this coffee is for being picked up, and is therefore pick-up coffee, as opposed to that kind that just sits on the counter all the time and must be drunk through a straw for fear of lifting it.

10/31/2007 03:01:00 PM  
Blogger nori said...

You're right, that is annoying! :)

10/31/2007 03:04:00 PM  

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